The evidence doesn’t lie: the Yeti legend has to do with bears and not monstrous snowmen. This has been demonstrated by the DNA analysis carried out by an international team of scientists on the remains of 9 supposed specimens of the Yeti that are preserved both in museums and in private collections and that include teeth, hair, bones, skin or feces collected in the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau. These shows were obtained thanks to the British production company Icon Films, which produced a special on the origins of the Yeti legend, ‘Yeti or not’, broadcast in 2016 on the Animal Planet chain.
The Yeti, as furry and white as a snow bear, although bipedal and taller than a man, is one of the monsters of legend – especially since the 1950s – whose physical evidence has never been determined. No corpses or fossil remains have ever been found.
What really is the Yeti?
Of the 9 samples analyzed, 8 of them turned out to belong to bears: Asian black bears, Himalayan brown bears or Tibetans. The last sample, a tooth, is from a domestic dog. Thus, those remains of the “Abominable Snowman” are nothing more than a set of bear hair and a dog’s tooth. There is no sign of the biped mythological being called Yeti that, according to popular legends, inhabits the mountains of Asia or of any unusual creature.
“ Our findings clearly suggest that the biological foundations of the Yeti legend can be found in local bears, and our study shows that genetics should be able to unravel other similar mysteries,” says Charlotte Lindqvist of the University of Buffalo. .).
Dismantling the legend of the Yeti
It is not the first time that science has tried to dismantle this myth . In 2014, a team of researchers from the University of Oxford (UK) and the Museum of Zoology in Lausanne, (Switzerland), led by Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes, published a paper describing how they tested 37 hair samples worldwide, with a similar result to the present investigation.
It was the first genetic study of samples of “anomalous primates” and each of the samples analyzed corresponded to a known species, from polar bears to sheep to humans.
That first investigation, however, was based on a simpler genetic test than the current one. Only in mitochondrial RNA sequencing. In the latter study, they used PCR amplification, mitochondrial RNA sequencing, mitochondrial genome assembly, and phylogenetic analysis.
This work “represents the most rigorous analysis to date of samples suspected of being derived from anomalous or mythical ‘hominid creatures ,” the authors comment.
Outside of cryptic research, sequenced DNA, compared to living or modern animals, can provide insight into the evolution of bears, especially for the most vulnerable or endangered.
The team sequenced the mitochondrial DNA of 23 Asian bears (including putative Yeti samples) and compared it to other bears around the world. They found that Tibetan brown bears are closely related to American bears, but Himalayan bears belong to a different evolutionary lineage that separated about 650,000 years ago, during a great ice age.
“Additional genetic research on these rare and elusive animals may help illuminate the environmental history of the region, as well as have an evolutionary history around the world, and additional ‘Yeti’ samples could contribute to this work,” said Charlotte. Lindqvist.
Referencia: Genetic analysis of hair samples attributed to yeti, bigfoot and other anomalous primates. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. (acceso no abierto) Universidad de Buffalo (http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2017/11/037.html)
